Over a week after City College reclaimed a space used as a student center, two student activists who had vigorously protested the college’s decision to take over the space were suspended from the university.

Tafader Sourov, 19, and Khalil Vasquez, 22, say they’re being punished for their leadership in recent demonstrations against college administrators.

On October 20, students at City College learned their Morales/Shakur Community Center, on the third floor of the North Academic Center, no longer existed. College officials had taken back the space on Oct. 19, saying they needed the space to expand career services.

The disappearance of the center—which was founded in 1989 and is a breeding ground for leftist activism on campus—has prompted three protests so far. Two of them have turned aggressive. On October 21, alumnus David Sukar was arrested for refusing to leave the North Academic Center. And later that week on Thursday, he was arrested and pepper sprayed after, college officials said, he used “his child as a shield” to “bypass public safety officers and enter the Administration Building.”

Sourov and Vasquez were at the heart of the action, along with students who wanted to get into the building for their classes and midterms. “[Campus security] actually grabbed me and flung me around,” says Sourov. “It was a tight grip.”

Then, this Monday, they were barred from campus. Vasquez says he was getting out of a class on social deviance when he was stopped, given a letter of suspension, and escorted off the premises. He’s protested at CUNY before—getting a baton to the head for protesting tuition fee increases in 2011, he says—but this was the first time he’s been disciplined.

Sourov says the university is suspending him not only for protesting the Center’s shutdown, but also as retaliation for his role in leftist activism. He and Vasquez are involved with a group called the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee, which protests ROTC programs on campuses and CUNY’s April decision to hire General David Petraeus to teach a seminar this autumn.

“We believe it’s tied back into our political line against militarization of CUNY,” Sourov says. “I guess they think if they target the two of us they’ll be able to stop the movement.”

The CUNY-wide group has 791 “likes” on Facebook. City College alone has over 13,000 students: over 20 percent of its undergrads are Asian or Black, and 33 per cent are Hispanic. Full-time undergraduate tuition is just over $5,700 a year.

Guillermo Morales was a leader in the FALN, a separatist paramilitary that claimed responsibility for a 1975 bomb attack in New York which killed four people. Also known as Joanne Chesimard, Assata Shakur is the first and only woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. She escaped prison in America after killing a New Jersey state trooper. The two—both City College alumni—live in Cuba. In 2006, the center itself sparked controversy for its extremist namesakes.

But its quick disappearance without student consultation or oversight has raised questions about transparency and freedom of speech in the university setting. While the center is shut down and students penalized, CUNY also drafted a “policy on expressive activity” this year, which would prohibit shouting or handing out leaflets without authorization.

On Monday, however, the demonstrations and shouts continued. Over 13 campus police officers stared down about 40 protesters at City College. The cluster of people—many decked out in backpacks, wearing olive green, black, red and grey—took turns holding a red cardboard shield with the black fist that makes the center’s logo. “We will fight,” they chanted, promising to reclaim the center “by any means necessary.”

City College spokesperson Deidra Hill wouldn’t respond to questions or confirm basic details about the university’s student conduct regulations. However, she did release the following statement: “City College follows a community standards process in which student disciplinary actions are confidential unless there is a need to know. City College continues to support students’ rights to exercise their constitutional rights and to ensure a safe and peaceful environment for the campus community.”

Genevieve Sabourin got handed 30 days in jail before her trial even finished.

The Canadian bit-actress and publicist accused of stalking Alec Baldwin is being tried this week in Criminal Court in Manhattan. She has refused to plead guilty for over a year. She’s even turned down slap-on-the-wrist bargains from the prosecutor that would have meant no jail time if she promised to respect the rules of her restraining order.

As Sabourin, who has insisted she and Baldwin were in a romantic relationship, has said previously, “You don’t plead guilty to something you didn’t do.”

On Tuesday Baldwin testified that the two had dinner once as a favor to their mutual friend Martin Bregman, and that Sabourin was Bregman’s mistress. After their dinner, Baldwin said, Sabourin started to harass him and his wife Hilaria.

But Sabourin said she and Bregman were just friends, and that she first met Baldwin in 2000 when she worked as a publicist on the film “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” on which he had a cameo. She testified that ten years later, the two reconnected. The “professional charmer,” she said, brought her to Central Park and a show before he took her to dinner. Then, she said, they returned to her hotel and made love.

“It was more than romantic,” she said during questioning by her lawyer Todd Spodek. “It was perfect.”

The two maintained a long-distance affair that included phone sex, she said. After Baldwin became distant, she wanted closure.

The theatrical 41-year-old was charged with contempt after she started the day interrupting her defense lawyer, arguing with the prosecution and demanding that Bregman come to court and testify.

When Judge Robert Mandelbaum warned that she could be held in contempt for disrupting the court, Sabourin retorted, “I’ve been held in contempt for the past two years.”

Mandelbaum snapped. “That’s it,” he yelled. “You have made it impossible for this court to proceed.” Sabourin will face a month of jail time for disregarding the rules.

The case is proceeding as a bench trial, so no jurors have been swayed by Sabourin’s emotional flare-ups. The outbursts continued from Tuesday, when she interrupted Alec Baldwin’s testimony to yell that he was “lying.”

Sabourin had a hard time directly answering Spodek’s questions. At one point, she said Baldwin gave her his personal phone number on a piece of paper underneath a table. Later, she said he told her how to contact him verbally. Between questions, she also rambled about her career, Baldwin’s displays of affection and her lack of trust in the legal system.

People throughout the courtroom—a court officer, a journalist, even Sabourin’s lawyer—put their heads in their hands at various points in the day, seemingly exhausted.

Losing his patience, Mandelbaum made a last-ditch attempt to bring her back on track. “I’m trying to understand your testimony,” he said. “I’m going to ask you very specific questions. Please answer them.”

The prosecutor’s cross-examination was short and mainly focused on tying Sabourin to the online accounts associated with harassing messages. Sabourin said she didn’t know if she had been hacked and that many Twitter accounts had been set up to mock her.

“I am the joke of Canada,” she said.

Sabourin still hasn’t found the closure she has said she wanted from Baldwin. “I wish I knew his side of the story,” she testified. “Fifty per cent of the story’s missing. So how can I know what happened?”

Sabourin is charged with aggravated harassment in the second degree, harassment, and stalking. Mandelbaum is expected to deliver a final verdict on her case on Thursday.

]]>https://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/baldwins-stalker-gets-30-days-for-contempt/feed/0katietothThis city is always moving.https://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/this-city-is-always-moving/
https://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/this-city-is-always-moving/#respondSun, 02 Mar 2014 22:41:39 +0000http://katie-toth.com/?p=75]]> One man biking under the above-ground subways in Long Island City, Queens. You can check out more of my shots of city life on tumblr. ]]>https://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/this-city-is-always-moving/feed/0katietothWhen childhood routines become grown-up treasureshttps://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/when-childhood-routines-become-grown-up-treasures/
https://katietoth.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/when-childhood-routines-become-grown-up-treasures/#respondSun, 02 Mar 2014 21:08:34 +0000http://katie-toth.com/?p=61]]>Last month, I spoke with Joseph Audeh, a Palestinian-American Brooklynite in his 20s, about growing up as one of the only Arabic kids in his suburban Florida community. This is a snippet of his story I played for Uptown Radio at Columbia Journalism School.

This is the first podcast of the first presentation of my new morning show on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax! I interviewed Brendan Jones about his new clothing service in the city, I aired friend Lauren Naish’s documentary about GSAs in New Brunswick, and I asked acoustic cover-pop group The Woodshed to play their new twist on Britney Spears. You can hear #InterrobangRadio in all of its live-on-air glory–Thursday mornings at 9am.

When Christian author Rachel Held Evans finished her last book, her publisher suggested she remove the word “vagina.”

“Your editors consult with you about what will not get past the Christian bookstore gatekeepers,” she told me. Words like ‘kick-ass’ and ‘damn’ are out, naturally. But as Evans said, “I was fine with it, until they got to the word ‘vagina.’”

While the author did agree to the edit, she later mentioned it on her blog to let off some steam—her readers were incensed.

They “were really up in arms about the fact that I would have to take out something like that, you know, just basic anatomy,” she said. One even started a petition on Amazon to let Evans keep the word in her book. She talked again with her publisher, who agreed to put it back in. “I guess we kind of won ‘vaginagate,’”she jokes. “I just don’t know if it will be in Christian bookstores.”

Evans says publishers feel obligated to cater to standards of major bookstore chains—retailers can dictate writers’ creative choices simply by virtue of their commercial clout. “Lifeway hadn’t even seen the manuscript yet,” she says. “This is just sort of standard procedure.”

For authors and publishers, that means trying to create compelling work while avoiding a myriad of words and themes that might leave a major retailer cold. “There’s just sort of an understanding among authors that if you’re working in a Christian industry you’ll probably have to engage in this dance at some level,” she says. “What am I allowed to write? What am I not allowed to write? What can I sneak in?”

Sanitized Language

Just this month, Lifeway has come under fire for refusing to stock The Blind Side, a movie about a wealthy white Christian family that supports a black teen from a broken home. The store refused to answer most questions by email, and denied requests for an interview, but they did send a statement about the film. “We agree the movie as a whole promotes Christian values and a redemptive message,” they say. However, it includes “incidents of street language and racial slurs against African Americans.”

LifeWay Christian Resources was founded in 1891 as a nonprofit arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. It has 156 stores across the United States. Lifeway also includes a publishing group, two conference centers, and two online shopping websites.

Eric Metaxas is the author of the bestselling biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor Martyr, Prophet, Spy, published by Thomas Nelson. He told me that he thinks the retailer’s decision was “a misunderstanding of God’s idea of holiness.”

Metaxas says that when Hollywood makes a film that portrays evangelical Christians in a positive light, Christians should embrace it. “When a ‘Christian bookstore’ does something like this, they send a… fundamentally wrong message about what Christianity is,” he says. “If you read Scripture, obviously in context, there’s all kinds of stuff that’s unpleasant.”

The Blind Side incident reminds him of his first experience writing a Christian book for adults. In 2005, he was working on Everything You Wanted To Know About God (but were afraid to ask), for Waterbrook Multnomah. Metaxas is a Yale-educated Manhattan-dweller and a late convert to the religion: “I have been in the secular world my whole life.” As a result, he says, “I want to actually speak the [mainstream] cultural language.”

So Metaxas described the search for purpose within a Darwinist atheist world as “a total crapshoot.” Facing the Christian subculture for the first time, he was in for a surprise. “The editor objected strongly to the term,” he says. “What he said was ‘It’s a gambling term, and we don’t want to, like, frighten a large bookstore account.’”

“I just couldn’t believe that [my editor] was serious,” remembers Metaxas. “You could hear the fear that this book needs to be bought by these major stores. If they do not buy tons of copies of this book, we’ve got nothing here, because we’re probably not going to sell a lot into Barnes and Noble or the secular chains.”

Metaxas believes that the industry’s sanitation of language makes it harder for Christian writers to spread their message. “This culture is starving for a robust, passionate Christian art,” he says. “For your average beginning writer this would have a chilling effect.”

Caryn Rivadeneira, has written two books for Tyndale House Publishers—Grumble Hallelujahand Mama’s Got A Fake ID. Rivadeneira faces pushback over moments as small as using the word “crap” or the depiction of a character drinking a glass of wine in a bathtub.

“It’s never the publishing houses themselves,” she says. “It’s not that the editors are upset about it, or even that they think readers will be.”

“There are certain bookstores who won’t carry books if there’s any of what they deem [to be] inappropriate language or situations.”

Metaxas agrees that editors don’t relish these changes: “I think most people who are in this world know that this is ridiculous.” But that leaves him more frustrated. “The question is, whom do they fear? What world have we entered, and can’t we all admit that this is not working for God’s glory?”

Why Isn’t She Married?

When I ask Eric Metaxas if he thinks that this heavy-handed editing is happening more frequently to women, he rejects the idea outright. “It’s definitely equal,” he says.

Metaxas—who later declines to give an example of some of the crude language in his Bonhoeffer book (from some Luther passages), telling me, “my wife is in the car, and you’re a lovely young woman”—is more concerned with “the idea that [Christian writers] should be marginalized into this somehow manicured ghetto.”

But women in the industry aren’t so sure. They themselves don’t describe their experiences as discriminatory, but some wonder if cultural factors leave their work subject to a more watchful eye.

“I looked through other authors who shared my publisher and who had been carried, whose books had been carried in Christian bookstores, and these were guys and they had referenced testicles and penises—so it seemed like at least with this, there was a double standard,” says Evans. She doesn’t want to point to sexism to explain the disparity—the books might have been considered more literary, she adds.

Andy Meisenheimer is a book editor who worked for six years at Zondervan before he became a freelancer. He told me that while female writers may be held to a higher standard in the industry, the reasons aren’t quite what an outsider might expect. “That’s not because the writer is female, but because the intended audience is female,” he says.

Meisenheimer explains that female-authored books published by Christian publishing houses are usually targeted for female consumers. “There’s the implicit assumption that male readers are going to be less offended by things than female readers.”

Caryn Rivadeneira seems to agree. She says writers are given more or less leeway because of their particular market and audience. “I think that might have more to do with it than being male.”

On the other hand, Evans says, “just being an evangelical is harder for a woman.” She points to debates within the faith about how much authority women are allowed to exercise. “I can’t imagine that that doesn’t affect how evangelical women are read and how seriously they’re taken.”

Karen Spears Zacharias is an author who has published two books with Christian publisher Zondervan and three for the general market—most recently releasing A Silence of Mockingbirds (MacAdam/Cage) last year.

Zacharias’ Christian books are published with gender-neutral covers and, yes, the occasional straight-shooting swear word. In an interview with RD, she says she’s not sure Christian consumers are as quick to revere a female writer. “I definitely think that there is a standard of expectation for women that is different than it is for men,” she says. She points to 2003 Christian cult hit, Blue Like Jazz. Its author, Donald Miller, is a single 40-year-old man.

“You try to think, now could a single 30-some-plus woman go out there and write Blue Like Jazz and have it resonate within the Christian community the way Don Miller Did?” Zacharias says the answer is no. “The Christian community… would have been saying ‘What’s wrong with her, why isn’t she married?’”

Irrelevance is Not a Negative Term

While some authors say their publishers are intent on pleasing religious retailers, Andy Meisenheimer disagrees. He says the question of whether bookstores have an ideological stranglehold on Christian books is about five years too late.

When he was at Zondervan, he says, the publishing house was already learning how to market its Christian books to a younger, more secular crowd. “Lifeway looks like they sell a bunch of Zondervan books,” says Meisenheimer. “Well, yes—but they’re mostly Rick Warren. They’re not our hip, young cool books.” Zondervan does not release sales figures and couldn’t speak to the claim.

Tyndale editor Adam Graber usually edits Bibles, although he’s also edited two other Tyndale books. He says the publishing house’s rules come from within: they aren’t reflective of retailers’ wishes, but rather of its Christian mission. “At Tyndale, we have pretty clear standards ourselves about what we do and don’t want to publish,” he says. “We’ve never had clear standards dictated to us by someone who’s trying to sell our books.

“That said, Lifeway’s a huge sales channel for Christian books, so they do carry a lot of weight.”

A statement from Meisenheimer’s former publishing house seems to reflect that industry weight. “Zondervan and Lifeway sales representatives communicate regularly with any questions and concerns to ensure the consumers are provided with the most relevant, high quality, high value Christian products,” a spokesperson wrote.

But as Meisenheimer suggests, that influence may be on the verge of waning. In 2011 the venture’s researchers reported Southern Baptists’ fourth straight year of decline in overall membership. This year, a Gallup Poll has revealed Americans’ confidence in organized religion is at a new low.

In 2008, LifeWay cut five percent of its staff—about 100 jobs—because of financial concerns, according to Associated Baptist Press.

But unlike secular businesses, which stay relevant in order to make a profit, Christian ventures have a mission that may leave them uninterested in compromise. “Irrelevance is not a negative term to them,” Meisenheimer says. “What’s more important… is that they’re publishing truth.”

“You can publish my work or not, but if you don’t want it somebody else will,” says Zacharias. Christian businesses have to consider their markets, she says, and she’s okay with that.Where’s Your Jesus Now (Zondervan) included discussions about how to fix the relationship between the church and the gay community. It was not carried by Lifeway. “That’s Lifeway’s loss.”

In that situation, Zacharias did her own heavy lifting. She found an independent publicist to help her market the book, and connected with business owners who had supported her work in the past. “There are plenty of independent bookstores out there who championed it.”

While some people find life after Lifeway, Rachel Held Evans is caught in transition. “I do know authors who have chosen secular publishers just to avoid this entire situation,” she says. She hopes that by speaking out, authors can change the process behind Christian books. “I just think if we are all aware of it and we all start talking about it, maybe we could all improve.”

Mary Potter is a registered nurse with the Sherbourne Health Centre’s LGBT Primary Care Program. She says the most important thing for users to know is that they have other options for medication.

“The issue is when they don’t come to see us or… they’re told by the pharmacy that they just don’t have it and people are waiting without the medication,” she says.

Waiting, rather than finding an alternative drug, can result in a lapse of the medication’s effects. “They should be coming in to see their physicians or nurse practitioners because they can be switched to a different compound.”

She says that this is the second time a shortage of the drug has happened this year. “We actually had a recent problem with Delatestryl being back ordered; there was an issue with the raw material in the summer,” Potter says.

Five pharmacies in Toronto were asked about the availability of Delatestryl. All the pharmacists contacted said the drug was on back-order.

But another injectable testosterone, called Depo-Testosterone (testosterone cypionate), is available. The concentration of the active ingredient is lower in Depo-Testosterone, so injections may be bigger and more uncomfortable, and the drug is made with a different oil.

A topical gel and patch are also available, although they are significantly more expensive.Adam Silvertown is the pharmacy manager at Pace Pharmacy on Isabella Street. The transdermal patch, known as Androderm, can cost users between $150 to $160 a month, he says.

Silvertown says a month’s supply of Delatestryl is cheaper, ranging “from high $60s to the mid-to-high $70s, depending on the pharmacy.”

Potter says pharmacies and health providers should reach out and tell those who are using the drug about the shortage, so that users aren’t surprised.

Theramed, the former manufacturer of Delatestryl, recently sold the product rights to Valeant International, another drug distributor.

But Valeant Canada’s Carine Remolien, a pharmalogical co-ordinator for Valeant Canada, says that Valeant’s purchase of Delatestryl is not the reason for the shortage. She says the product is unavailable because of a “manufacturing delay.”

“The product might be available January 15,” she says, but she adds that the date for its return remains uncertain.

Lorraine Allen is manager of operations for Theramed Canada, the company that used to manufacture the drug. She refused to comment on the winter shortage or on Valeant’s acquisition of the rights to the drug. However, she did say that Theramed’s earlier shortage in the summer was, also, “due to manufacturing.”

When asked to explain what sort of problems in manufacturing had caused the shortage at that time, Allen responded, “This is a privately held company. There’s no more information you’re going to get from us.”

Jeff Morrison is director of government relations and public affairs for the Canadian Pharmacists Association. He says, “there’s no requirement on the part of manufacturers or industries to disclose why a particular drug is in short supply.”

Dr. Joel Lexchin, is a professor in the Atkinson School Health Policy & Management at York University. Lexchin isn’t familiar with the particular shortage, but notes that shortages are a global problem.

“There are a number of things that can cause the shortages,” he says. “One of them is the fact that the drug companies are accessing the active ingredients, in many cases from developing countries primarily India and China, and the production standards may not be as stringently enforced as they are in North America.

“You can also get loss of production for purely economic reasons, sales aren’t high enough and the companies decide it’s not in their interest to keep making the product.”

Lexchin says there’s not much that Canadians can expect will be done to stop such drug shortages soon. “In the Canadian perspective, probably very little will be done to try to prevent this.”

However, he does have a few recommendations.

“At a minimum Health Canada could require that drug companies, if they plan on stopping producing particular products, have to give a notice that would be in the range, six months to a year, so everybody could prepare for that,” he says.

“You could go further and Health Canada could say to companies, if you’re going to have a license to produce the drug, that you have to give a guarantee that you will continue to produce that drug for a particular period of time — otherwise we won’t allow you to market it.”

Morrison, of CPA, says a new reporting system for shortages is allowing pharmacists to anticipate problems in advance. Manufacturers haven’t yet reported Delatestryl as being in short supply, he says. However, he says, the system for reporting drug shortages is about two weeks old and still working out some kinks.

Morrison wants to see the state using its purchasing power to pressure drug manufacturers to maintain a steady supply of their products. “Provincial governments… are big purchasers of drugs for their public drug plans. A lot of the contracts provinces have with manufacturers, there are clauses that mandate [drug companies to] maintain certain supply levels,” he explains. “The problem is a lot of provinces just don’t enforce those.”

In a 2010 Canadian Pharmacists Association report, 91.3 per cent of pharmacists said drug shortages “inconvenienced” their patients. 69.8 per cent said their patients’ health outcomes were “adversely affected” by shortages.

“In a lot of cases, patients are the ones sort of having to run back and forth between their doctor’s office and their pharmacy to get a new prescription and they’re saying it’s a huge inconvenience,” Morrison says.

Benjamin Vandorpe was lucky. He filled his prescription before learning the medication was on back-order in Toronto. The Nova Scotia native says he first heard about the shortage from friends in that province. When he learned many Toronto pharmacies were also out of stock — and could be for about another month — he decided to call the suppliers to ask what was causing the hold-up. Instead, he found himself bounced from one automated voice to another.

Vandorpe thinks Valeant and Theramed should have notified users of the drug about the hiccup. “Even just a note on the website explaining the situation would have been great, especially since there is only one person who deals with inquiries about medications, and she’s out of the office until January,” he says, in an email.

“A lot of people depend on this medication for physiological, mental, and emotional well-being,” Vandorpe adds. “There are so few doctors who are willing to prescribe it to trans-identified individuals that it’s a serious inconvenience to have to seek out another medication.”

Potter seems to agree. “It is quite disruptive,” she says. She says because an alternate product is available, the shortages create unnecessary frustration for clients. “Maybe I’ll just be recommending the cypionate instead of the Delatestryl as a result of these shortages.”

“Trans people have to fight so hard just to get that medication in the first place,” she says. “Putting people through these gaps or making them… [have to] struggle to get a medication is just kind of unreasonable.”

Alvaro Orozco smiles from behind the glass barrier as he picks up the phone to start our interview at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre. He hits his hand against his forehead and sighs when asked if he remembers the names of the officers who arrested him on May 13.

“No,” he says. “I should have.”

Reliving his arrest makes Orozco visibly anxious.

“I was at Ossington Station,” he recalls. “I was on my way to dinner with a friend. I was on my way to the bus. Just a few steps into the bus he approached me… They asked me for my ID, I showed them my ID, they said you’re under arrest.

“I said, ‘You guys are the police, not immigration.’ They were not respectful at all. They put the handcuffs on me super tight; I felt like they were going to cut me or something.”

Orozco says that once he was in custody one of the officers who arrested him appeared to call immigration officials on a cellphone.

“They were saying, ‘We have this guy. Is this the guy you want?’”

Orozco says that he was taken to a police station and that immigration enforcement officers arrived there within 15 minutes. He was then taken to the Immigration Holding Centre on Rexdale Blvd.

He had a detention review hearing the following morning with a judge, but his new lawyer, Richard Wazana, was unable to attend. Wazana tells Xtra that preparing a request to defer Orozco’s deportation was his biggest priority at that time.

“I was hoping somebody might be able to attend,” Wazana says. “In the end, they couldn’t, but the likelihood of him being released [on bail] when arrangements for removal are being made are next to nil.”

“I was there with four people, including the judge,” says Orozco. “I was so attacked by them with all their questions and all their statements about me. I told the judge that even with all the experiences I’ve had with appeals, I’ve been active in the community and doing my own art exhibitions with paintings and photography. And at the same time I’ve been doing volunteer work.”

Orozco, now 25, fled Nicaragua to the United States when he was 12 after, he says, his father beat him for being gay. He lived illegally in the US until 2005 and then came to Toronto. At his initial Canadian refugee hearing in October of 2006, Immigration and Refugee Board member Deborah Lamont told him via teleconference from Calgary that she didn’t believe that he was gay.

Orozco has been living in Toronto under a deportation order since October of 2007.

“The reason I didn’t show up to some of the deportation dates is because at that time I was under medication for anxiety,” he says. “Mentally I was not in the position to make those decisions.”

Orozco doesn’t want to say what country he might be deported to because, he says, he’s concerned for his safety.

“My lawyer is going to file a request to [defer] the deportation until the H & C [humanitarian and compassionate grounds application] is reviewed.”

If immigration denies this request, Orozco says his lawyer is prepared to make an appeal in court.

Wazana says he filed the request to defer Orozco’s removal until his H & C application is concluded. He says he thinks Orozco has a good chance of being allowed to stay until the hearing. The Department of Immigration is often “amenable to defer a removal when the application has been outstanding for quite some time,” he says. “The only reason I’m not that confident… is because most of that time he was underground.”

Even as he speaks of his potential deportation, Orozco says he has some things to be grateful for.

“I mean something to the community and to the country,” he says. “But the most amazing thing is that in this situation, different groups come together as one. That’s something that is very touching. It makes me have new hope.”

The legal battle over sex-work laws went to the Ontario Court of Appeal this month, causing some sex workers and advocates to start asking what will happen next in what they describe as a fight for safer working conditions.

Morgan Page, trans sex-work outreach officer at the 519 Community Centre, is not optimistic. She says she expects the court system to draw out the stay for as long as possible before new, potentially harsher regulatory practices are discussed in the House of Commons.

Page suspects that the stays the government is requesting will be granted “after exhausting as much time as they possibly can…that appeal will be appealed by whoever didn’t win, and it will keep being appealed until it eventually gets to the Supreme Court of Canada where we will have the actual decision.”

That decision may not look as good as sex workers had originally hoped, said Page. “The Harper government is not going to back down all of a sudden. That would be political suicide for them.”

Nikki Thomas is the Executive Director of Sex Professionals of Canada. She seems to agree. “It’s entirely possible we’ll end up with something worse than what we started with but we had no way of knowing that when we started the challenge,” she says. “Back in 2008 there was a lot more uncertainty politically than there is now. We had no idea there would be a Conservative majority at this point…we just have to make sure we’re included in the dialogue and get a chance to participate in the discussion.”

The appeal was held through the week of June 14 to 17. At press time, a ruling has yet to be made, although as of Friday, June 17, a temporary stay on the legislation remains in effect as the justices make their decision. Justice David Doherty, head of the panel of five judges, said, “the stay will remain in effect until we say something different.”

The Crown has requested a new 18-month minimum stay on the current laws, whatever the Court’s decision may be, so Parliament may discuss the issue and come up with a new regulatory system if necessary.

A legislative stay is a decision courts can make after they strike down a law, in order to give the lawyers on behalf of the government time to prepare an appeal or give Parliament time to discuss what new laws, if any, should be put in place. During said time, the previously existing laws remain fully in effect. “In effect all the laws are still in place even though they’ve been ruled unconstitutional,” Page said.

For Page, while the original ruling on Sept. 28, 2010 may have felt like a breakthrough, a lack of education around the stay and what it means for sex workers left many women vulnerable. “A lot of the sex workers we serve…were quite confused about what this decision meant and what a stay was,” she said. “There were quite a few people that I worked with who seemed to be under the impression that everything was completely legal and they didn’t have to worry about police anymore. That’s definitely not the truth.”

After an initial sense of confidence, however, Page said her clients are newly cautious. “By now most of them have definitely got an understanding that the police are still a threat out there and are still going to arrest them.”

Page believes that charges against sex workers in her community over the past two years have been on the rise. “There has been an increased police presence in the village and on the stroll, so much so that the traditional stroll at Homewood and Maitland is basically no longer in use by trans sex workers,” she said.

She points to new boundaries imposed on sex workers charged with solicitation or communication for the purpose of prostitution. For example, sex workers charged with public communication are often asked to agree not to enter the area from Bloor to Queen and Yonge to Sherbourne, Page explained. That’s the entire gay village—which prevents them from being able to access their strolls. These boundaries also, however, prevent sex workers from accessing the community services and programs often nearby, for fear of getting arrested.

Thomas points out that the legal complexity of the issue, however, is more nuanced than the law merely remaining in place. “Police…are still going out and still arresting people on charges that would not be pursued at the trial level,” she said. “There’s no judge in the entire country who’s going to pursue with charges against someone for communication at this point, when the law is currently being reviewed by a higher court.”

Thomas says, “Justice Himel’s decision effectively neutralized the laws in terms of being able to prosecute them, but people can still be charged with those laws. And what police will do is they’ll target the most vulnerable and the least informed.”

Police in Ontario continue to arrest people on prostitution-related charges. Just two months ago, London police officers arrested two men and charged them with keeping a common bawdy house. Meanwhile, in Metro Vancouver, RCMP officers raided and closed two local massage parlours only weeks after Himel’s September 28 decision was made, a move that sex advocate Susan Davis said was a response to the Ontario victory.

Toronto Police Services spokespeople could not answer questions from the Ryerson Free Press about the boundary programs imposed on sex workers or whether they continue to arrest sex workers and clients at press time. Detective Paul Gauthier of Special Victims Services, however, shared his perspective on the ruling.

Special Victims Services is a special branch of the Toronto Police Services that responds to the needs of victims of crime who are involved with the sex trade. While often sex workers may have broken the law, through this arm of the Service, Gauthier explains, “we look at the more serious of the offenses, generally the offenses that we get are sexual assault, harassment, robbery, that sort of thing.”

Gauthier is concerned that a loss of the legislation against living on the avails of prostitution will make it more difficult to prosecute pimps who are exploiting young women. “If we lose the living on the avails charge, that…makes it very difficult for us to enforce against pimps.”

Gauthier notes that “generally the way the pimps operate is they recruit girls who are often underage and exploit them. Often times they make them work against their will and make them work in dangerous surroundings, keep all of their money, that sort of thing.”

Robbery, extortion, child abuse, and withholding income are all already illegal in Canada.

When asked if removal of the laws may make it more difficult for him to respond to victims who are also sex workers, Gautier says, “right now, some people who are involved in the sex trade seem to think they are committing an offense so there might be a bit of fear in reporting, whereas if the laws are struck down they may not feel those repercussions so they may be more willing to come and speak with us.

“However, I think most people—at least the ones who’ve been doing this for some time—understand that they’re not going to be charged if they’re the victim of a crime… and will report to us anyway.”

As a Supreme Court appeal continues to approach with each legal step, advocates also begin visioning their hopes for the future. Thomas would like to see a system of minimal regulation, where strict laws over licensing and red light districts do not push independent sex workers further underground. She says she’d like to see a system in which independent sex workers can work alone or within small groups, quietly, within their own communities.

Thomas is fiercely opposed to red light districts or bureaucratic regulation practices. She points out that red light districts not only “segregate and ghettoize [sex workers],” but are “really not fair to the people who live in that area…to force them to have all of the prostitution conducted in Toronto all of a sudden concentrated in an area that they live in, when they may not be interested in having it around.”

Page also hopes that “having their work not criminalised will hopefully help begin ending the stigma around sex work…which keeps people who are trying to exit sex work or pursue other work in addition to sex work from doing so.”

However, “The reality is a lot of women will still do street based work and it will still be dangerous,” Page said. She’d like to see more government programming “addressing the inequalities in people’s lives that make people rely on survival based sex work.”